Walt Hervi could fix practically anything from a broken nose to a piece of furniture. And Hervi, who died in Boulder on Nov. 18, was neither a doctor nor a carpenter.
He was a pharmacist, and the go-to guy for decades in Golden.
Doctors and patients went to him for advice, and might call him in the middle of the night for a prescription, or a broken nose.
One man told Hervi he couldn’t afford to go to the doctor about his nose so Hervi “straightened it,” said Hervi’s daughter, Wendy Anderson of Louisville. “I’m sure it must have hurt. The guy passed out. My dad simply said, ‘Feel better now?”‘
The man walked away satisfied, she said.
Another time, a woman came in with a stomachache, saying she’d been sent to Hervi by her doctor. The doctor called Hervi later to find out what he’d given her
“Everyone felt comfortable calling Walt,” said his wife, Jeanette Hervi.
When he retired in 1981, Hervi was president and general manager of one of the state’s best-known stores: Foss Drug in Golden. He had overseen the expansion of the store, which today sells everything from Pepto-Bismol to jukeboxes.
He began his pharmacy career in his hometown of Leadville, working for Sayer and McKee Drug, and Davis Drug.
Little flustered or angered Hervi. He never complained about night calls, and would readily deliver the prescription to a home if needed, Anderson said.
He left to join the Army when the United States entered World War II. Because of his pharmacy training (and additional medical training given by the Army), Hervi was put to work as an assistant to a neurosurgeon in a mobile military hospital. He stayed in the Army for 5 1/2 years because his medical skills were needed, his wife said. His medical work would have assured him a place in medical school, she said, but Hervi preferred being a pharmacist.
So he went to Golden and worked at Foss for 31 years.
Anderson knew of only one time her father became unnerved – and it wasn’t during the war. It was when Anderson fell off her bike as a child and got a concussion.
“He was shaking,” she said.
She also knew of only one time that he got angry with a customer. The customer was convinced that Wendy Anderson, who was working part time at Foss, hadn’t taken the price tag off a gift before wrapping it. Anderson reopened the gift and proved the tag was gone. The woman wanted it rewrapped in new paper.
Anderson called her dad and told him the story. He walked over to a shelf, got fresh paper and a ribbon, handed them to the woman and said, “Here. Now get out of my store.”
It was difficult to put anything over on Hervi. As a child, he veered into some intermittent criminal activity himself. Once, his toboggan was confiscated by police who thought he and his playmates were reckless. Hervi and a buddy broke into the police office and retrieved it.
Another time, Hervi took the nickel his mother, Lucy, gave him each Sunday for church, pocketed it and went straight to a slot machine. He won the whopping amount of $15 and was afraid to ever tell his mother about the nickel that didn’t make it to the collection plate.
Walter Waino Hervi was born Nov. 15, 1918, in Leadville and attended the Capital School of Pharmacy in Denver and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he earned his pharmaceutical science degree.
He married Jeanette Maler on Oct. 27, 1950. They met in Leadville when both were going steady with someone else, his wife said. After he offered her a ride home one day, “we dumped the other two,” she said, laughing.
Jeanette Hervi, like her husband, was an expert skier and, as a young teenager, she was one of the people who trained young men in the 10th Mountain Division. The soldiers were trained to ski in order to serve the Allied cause in the Italian Alps during World War II.
In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by a grandson, Tyler Walker.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-820-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
